disarm my heart
by Measured
Summary: Soren internally rants at the state of the world while being an utter hypocrite. Ike/Soren


Title: (you won't) disarm my heart  
Day/Theme: 26) The palisade around my heart  
Series: FE10  
Character/Pairing: light Ike/Soren, a mention of Boyd/Mist.  
Summary: Soren internally rants at the state of the world while being an utter hypocrite.  
Rating: PG?  
Author's note: the title comes from unsafe safe by The Hush Sound. It was supposed to be a fe_exchange entry, but I didn't feel like it fit the prompt I was given enough. So, consider it a mix of anti-vday/vday fic.

**.**

Soren never had a still moment. Even when he wasn't actively working, he would be planning, or busy in some manner.. Ike was late, but this was nothing new. So it was that Soren settled into the contemplation above the noises of the festivities outside.

One thing that Soren had found most useful in his life was that he was able to learn from other people's mistakes. He never had that all-consuming need to actually experience the folly for himself. Even at a young age, if he saw one of the other street children burn their hands by thrusting them too close to the fire, he fully comprehended and understood.

Such it was with the pathetic foibles of those around him. Their dramatics gave him a headache. The endless misunderstandings, the crying, the yelling and all those wastes of emotion that were what passed for interaction.

...and that was just Boyd and Mist.

Seeing the heir to a country make an entire fool of herself with her flushing and fluttering was enough to make him give up on Crimea altogether; had Ike not been there, he would have joined Daein in sheer embarrassment of being ruled over by a silly teenage girl with a head filled with insipid romantic notions.

It wasn't the feelings themselves that bothered him, for everyone had feelings. Even him, though he had long learned to subvert them and drive them inside, as every person should. It was how they let themselves get clouded over, and for what? A country put at stake for a good-looking whore? Foolishness. Reason was a dying art which no one seemed to pay much attention to these days as they were always _following their hearts _. Following their loins was more like it.

His jaw set. What did they, in all their 'passions' know about true loyalty? Even with all their talk of going to the moon for someone, how often was that cast aside? What was said in books rarely translated past the fictional notions. Declaring it in impossible terms made it theatrical, it cheapened the notion. Most lovers would say about the lengths and distances they would go, but how many truly did it? How many would walk through cold and over thorny, rough ground. With blisters and hunger pangs, all for the journey of just finding that one person again? How many would accept that the memory which meant most to them was lost, and simply take comfort in being by the side of their beloved?

Really, what did they know of love at all?

Ike wasn't like them. Like so many other ways, Ike was the exception. The only time he'd heard Ike wax poetic on anything it had been dinner. And to be fair, Ike's had been very hungry at the time. Not to mention that his waxing poetic was limited to a few choice words of praise between scarfing down whatever he could find. Ike was special, not because he was a hero, or handsome, but because of some innate honor inside him that the world lacked. His acceptance, his complete causelessness in the ways of rank and class, his insistence to treat everyone equal. Soren let his pen idle on the paper. Ike was proof that there was good in the world, even if it only centered around him. Ike was....

It was a knock at the door that broke him from the introspection.

"Come in.."

Two voices came from beyond the door. Ike must have run into someone else who was chatting needlessly with him. Again. Soren gritted his teeth and turned to listen. The voice wasn't feminine. He relaxed, somewhat. It was then that something caught his eye. There was something at the edge of his report. He noted the lines as his own, yet something entirely alien to himself. He traced it with his finger, his fingertip blackening with ink. It feathered, and yet the shape was still there. Two arches like an m, a bottom curvature shaped like a v. Somehow, there was a _heart_ on his ledger and Soren was not entirely sure how or when it got there. The paper had been clean before he had fallen into introspection. Now, it had a girlish, saccharine show of devotion scrawled over it in what was undoubtedly his own hand.

He was staring at it, dumbfounded when Ike entered the room. Ike peered down over his shoulder, faintly amused. "Did Mist doodle on your papers?"

"Yes," Soren said too quickly.

"Don't be too hard on her, ok?"

"Of course," Soren said. He pulled the paper away from Ike's vision. It crinkled, now not only ink stained, but creased as well.

"After this, let's go out and get something to eat," Ike said.

"In the mess hall? It's not dinnertime yet."

"If there's going to be some festival, the least we can do is enjoy the stalls of food. There was a person selling heart-shaped steaks." Ike licked his lips at the memory.

"It's your kind of festival, I suppose," Soren said.

"Well, if they have steak and ribs, any kind of festival is my festival," Ike said. He smiled, lopsided. "It's the rest I can't get a hang off."

"The saccharine, banal, overwrought, foolish aspects?" Soren prompted.

"That's the ones. I figured you'd hate it. Then again, it's easier to list the things that you like, and not the things that you hate. If I listed those, it'd take me all week."

"Hardly. It'd take three at least," Soren said. "So...shall I start?"

"Go on," Ike said.

And Soren read, knowing very well that Ike was far away dreaming of the meal he'd be having. Still, he did his duty and folded the paper away. He did not rip away the heart, which by now had become almost unrecognizable as anything but an inkblot. He left, it, and all its unveiled hypocrisies. He had a stupid, banal, overwrought and foolish festival (which happened to contain steak) to ready for.


End file.
